A Contemplative Weekly Link Round-Up

 

I've been having fun organizing the new cupboards in the kitchen. It's a lot like deciding how one wants to shelve one's books. (Now... didn't that last sentence sound a bit hoity-toity? One always has that response when one is used as a pronoun. *chuckle*) But I've also started to think of something else, especially when I can see something across the room each time I look up from my lap desk.

 

 

 

Yes, it's that new Santa cake stand. I saw it while putting in my grocery order at Target, and I couldn't resist. Christmas decorating this year depends a lot on the Jeep. It has been used so seldom this year that the battery has gone wonky, and since the Jeep sits right in front of the shed where the Christmas decorations are stored there could be a problem. We shall see.

 

Did you happen to notice the painting hanging above the cake stand? It's of St. Nicholas Church in Letchworth, England. The land the church is on was listed in the Domesday Book, and the church itself was built in 1109. Yes, I've been there, and I love the story about the mailbox that's at the lychgate of the church. The red cast iron box is emblazoned with a large VR for Victoria Regina.  Many years ago, a delivery van backed into the mailbox and damaged it. The powers-that-be wanted to replace the old box with a new ER (Elizabeth Regina) one. The vicar and the parishioners were having none of it. The VR mailbox was repaired and is there to this day. Another factoid about the church: Denis used to be a bell ringer there.

 

Thanksgiving is next Thursday here in the U.S. I hope everyone who celebrates has a wonderful turkey day (even if they don't eat any turkey). I have so very much to be thankful for that I know it's going to be a special day here at Casa Kittling. 

 

Enjoy the links!

 

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Data (books sales, publishing data, and algorithms) won't save art.
• Libraries can unite a lonely, divided nation. 
• How booksellers conspired to create the perfect bookstore marriage proposal. 
• U.K. publishers are predicting a rise in book prices.  
• How to increase your information literacy. 
• Octavia Butler's genre-bending Kindred is coming to Hulu. More from Vanity Fair.
  
• The guilt of re-reading and a hopeful solution. 
• Rian Johnson is releasing a case-of-the-week murder mystery TV series. 

 

►Book Banning & Censorship◄

• How gender identity books are placed, and removed, in elementary schools in North Platte, Nebraska.
• The Batesburg-Leesville school book removal has helped to inspire a South Carolina coalition against book bans. 
• The Owasso (Oklahoma) School Board has upheld its ban against a parent due to his efforts to remove a book from the library.
• Michigan GOP candidate Tudor Dixon wants a new book ban: no divorced characters. (Just when you thought things couldn't get any more ridiculous...)
• Book banning resonates as an issue in Maryland school board races.
• Mt. Shasta (California) parents are outraged over a sexually explicit book.
• The book-banning frenzy has spread to Tomball, Texas.
• The classroom culture war has come to Round Rock, Texas.
• The Orange County Board of Education is considering banning communist indoctrination. Fortunately, there's already a backlash against the proposal.
• The school library used to be a sanctuary. Now it's a battleground.
• The right-wing mothers fueling the school-board wars.
• "It must be stopped": the ACLU issues a warning on book bans in Michigan schools.
• A banned book lesson thrusts an Oklahoma teacher into a campaign.
• The biased online book ratings systems undermining professional review sources.
• The Jamestown (Michigan) library has been defunded (again) over LGBTQ books and will likely close.

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• A 10,000-year-old skeleton found in Britain has a modern-day descendant living nearby.
• A cache of 19th-century blue jeans has been found in an abandoned Arizona mineshaft. 
• A long-lost Artemisia Gentileschi painting has been discovered in the aftermath of the 2020 Beirut explosion. 
• A CT scan has revealed that a "complete lack of sunlight" killed a Renaissance-era toddler. How sad! 
• The 2,100-year-old burial of a priestess of Aphrodite has been discovered in Russia. 
• An unusual 120-year-old whaleback shipwreck has been found in Lake Superior.
• Medieval skeletons have revealed how the bubonic plague influenced human DNA. 
• Stadium? Theatre? Conservatory? A large ancient Roman building has been discovered on a Greek island. 
• A lost Rubens painting, rediscovered after two centuries, could sell for $35 million. 

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly May Clampett◄

• Thanks to climate change, Emperor penguins have joined the threatened species list.
• There's even more evidence available that being around birds can improve your mental health. (I could have told you that for free.)
• A five-month-old bird set an insane world record flying non-stop from Alaska to Australia (in eleven days-- WOW!).
• A photographer captures striking studio portraits to show the dignified side of wild animals.
• Honeybee swarms can produce as much electric charge as a storm cloud.
• In 2020, no monarch butterflies were seen along California's Central Coast. This year, nearly 4,000 returned.
• 45 puppies that fell asleep in the funniest places.
• No one knew that birds have this "mind-boggling" behavior.
• Deer-car collisions rise when daylight savings time ends. 
  

 

►The Wanderer◄

• Eight legendary Hollywood hangouts.
• The Hardy Tree in St. Pancras Old Church graveyard, London, England. 
• Discovering New Zealand crime fiction. 
• Hurricane Ian ruined man-made reefs and brought an algae bloom to Florida.
• Indie bookstores you can shop at from anywhere. 
• The best places to donate kids' books. 
• Harry Potter fans have been told to stop leaving socks on Dobby's grave on a beach in Wales. 
• The Jimmy Possum chair in Australia.

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Dracula versus the FBI.
• Why poet M. NourbeSe Philip declared war on her own book.
• Egyptians helped discover King Tut's tomb. Now they're finally being recognized.
• My first thriller: S.A. Cosby.
• A posthumous self-portrait by Paul Newman.
• William Darrah Kelley and Florence Kelley, the father-daughter team who reformed America.
• Veronika Lindberg Heino knit her own wedding dress, and it only cost $300.
• Sixteen facts about Judy Blume.
• William Still, the forgotten father of the Underground Railroad.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Books to take you back to Golden Age Hollywood.
• The top 25 TikTok book recommendations of 2022. 
• Fourteen Japanese historical fiction novels. 
• Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2022. 
• Nine funny mystery shows you can stream right now. 
• Mystery books that feature women in law enforcement. 
• Five mysteries that inspire serious childhood favorites vibes. 
• The sixty best campus novels from the last one hundred years. 

 

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

 

Stay safe. Stay healthy. And don't forget to curl up with a good book!